You may remember I Wish I Were The Moon, a game delightful both for its romantic simplicity, and the correct grammar of its title. Creator Daniel Benmergui has returned with a new, and quite astoundingly beautiful game, Today I Die.
Perhaps I’m feeling particularly flaky today, but the first time I was able to make a change to the game’s short paragraph, a warmth buzzed through me. The two-to-three minute long game takes place in a tall, RPS-screenshot-size-breaking, column, with a block of text suspended at the top. You play a girl, floating in water, surrounded by gently rising jellyfish and two angry piranha-like creatures. Everything else that happens is yours to discover.
It’s abundantly detailed, despite the simple pixel design and brevity. Playing with everything is rewarded, and it’s accompanied by some really lovely music by Hernan Rozenwasser. There are, as is the way of Ludomancy games, at least two endings to find, each telling a different story. And that, for me, is the key to this digital amuse-bouche: it sings of narrative, of how our entire life story can be altered through deliberate, conscious narrative choices. By the end I was properly moved.
If you appreciate Benmergui’s work you can make donations at his site. There’s a few financial incentives for the generous, with $27 buying you a credit in his next game, all the way up to $995 for a uniquely made version of I Wish I Were The Moon, with characters designed to your own whim, and a new ending of your own choosing. For those slightly more frugal, any amount donated will get you access to downloadable versions of three games, IWIWTM, Storyteller, and this latest, Today I Die. You could just donate nothing and still receive them, but that wouldn’t do, would it?
PS. Rather splendidly, there’s a lovely note on Today I Die’s page:
“This game is ad-free thanks to an unusual individual.”
Thanks to IndieGames for the spot.
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Interesting, enjoyed it in the end once I’d worked out what I was supposed to be doing. I thought I had completed it at one point and was left feeling ‘is that it?’ Then purely by chance found something else which revealed more of a conclusion which warmed even my stone cold heart.
This is splendiferous. I don’t feel the need to try for different endings, I think I got the best one.
I ended up surrounding the angry black thingies with bubbles, rather than the lady, either way it’s a lovely little game, like a pretty little garden or something.
It really is a beautiful little game. Just shows what you can do when you release the shackles of traditional game structures.
Okay so I lied and went to find a different ending, and as I suspected it wasn’t as happy as the first one.
SPOILER-O-TRON
“Free world,
full of beauty,
today I swim,
better by myself”
Knowing the ending I got the first time that made me sorta sad.
I love it.
Brought a big grin to my face, cheers for the heads up John.
Pet peeve of mine i guess, but the music completely drove me up the walls. Midi piano literally makes my skin crawl. Turning off the music enhanced the experience a lot for me.
It’s beautiful. But i’m not sure it’s a game so much as it’s like.. A very smart version of one of those anniversary cards that plays a melody when you open them.
Edit/Delete: heh. Funny. I commented on the 3d realms story and the comment wound up here. Bug?
Hm yeah, sounds like a usual chair-keyboard interface problem to me.
To judge by the title and the date of release, it looks like the character you play in this game must be an anthropomorphised 3DRealms.
Not that it’s happened much in this thread, but I have to say that people need to understand what the word “pretentious” means before using it. It is not a word you throw out because you found someone’s work not to your taste.
So as a public service, I’ll post the definition. This is required reading, people.
pretentious
pre⋅ten⋅tious [pri-ten-shuhs]
–adjective
1. full of pretense or pretension.
2. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
3. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.
Origin:
1835–45; earlier pretensious. See pretense, -ious
Related forms:
pre⋅ten⋅tious⋅ly, adverb
pre⋅ten⋅tious⋅ness, noun
Synonyms:
2. pompous. See bombastic. 3. showy. See grandiose.
Pretentious is indeed an overused word, Satsuz, and it’s completely understandable that people find this frustrating. It can serve as an unthinking way of denigrating something that happens not to tickle one’s fancy, as well as a conversation-killer and a lazy way out of offering any genuine analysis. But with all that said, it is also quite often an appropriate way of summing up what one believes to be wrong with a piece of work. If the word ‘pretentious’ is thrust into a discussion without explanation or further contribution, then sure, that’s just lazy and unhelpful. But having a word for ‘characterized by assumption of dignity or importance’ is pretty handy, and I think that a lot of the people who use it know exactly what it means. Which doesn’t make them right, of course, or their contributions to a discussion worthwile. But (and I know you didn’t say this at all, but I’ve seen it implied by others) its use shouldn’t automatically be considered the mark of a troll or a boring anti-intellectual.
As I said though, this game did tickle my fancy, and I certainly don’t think the p-word applies here!
I’m afraid I didn’t get it. Meh.
Awwwww.
That’s worth $3.00 on PayPal, considering I dropped $5 on Defence Grid two days ago.
Thanks, RPS fellow-romantics!
Lovely little game. Five minutes is all it asks, yet i’ll remember it for longer after completion.
This isn’t as good as Gears of War.
Oh mannnn.
I felt utterly stupid, because I didn’t really know what to do during this game, and then it clicked. Oh, it clicked so well. Thanks, RPS!
@Chalee: It makes me sad that there are really people out there who believe this.
Nevermind that I haven’t played GoW2…
I enjoyed Gears 2 more than this. Sue me.
@Chalee + Rohit: The fact that both of you are comparing a non-commercial game made on a small budget to Gears of War (2) is ridiculous in the first place. Nice going.